Full Minecraft: Education Edition out now

The full version of Minecraft: Education Edition was launched yesterday, after a month-long beta testing period in which over 50,000 students and teachers tried out the software in classrooms and gave the company feedback.

‘World-building game’ Minecraft was aquired by Microsoft in 2014 and their educational version of the game was announced in January this year, but the concept dates back to 2011.

The version released yesterday has a so-called ‘Classroom mode’, a companion app for teachers to “manage world settings, communicate with students, give items, and teleport students in the Minecraft world”.

The educational version of the game will also incorporate certain features from other iterations of the game such as “such as leads and horses, additional player skins, pistons and the remainder of Redstone functionality and an updated user interface”.

Before the launch, there were already countless examples of users using the game as an educational tool. The core version even allows you to create circuits using certain materials, making it suitable for engineering simulations. It has also been used for coding and programming tutorials online.